How to Determine the Motivation of a Character of a Story?
In every story, there are characters whose actions form the basic storyline for the plot development. Characters are the most important part of the story. The entire storyline is based on them. So, it is important to acquaint yourself with the character to understand the story on a deeper level. Whatever a character does in the story has some sort of motivation behind it. Characters don't just take decisions and actions based on nothing. They have special motivations for doing so. Character motivation is important in a story because it helps in defining the character roles and building the tensions leading to conflict. Motivation also reveals a lot about the character itself. Here are a few common motivations of characters. You can determine these by taking a closer look at the actions of the character.
Need
One of the basic motivations of a character is the basic need. This motivation is mostly related to survival. It includes basic needs such as food, water, money, shelter, etc. The character does everything to attain these needs and live a better life.
Love and Belonging
If the basic needs of the character are fulfilled, then another motivation could be related to love and relationships. Most conflicts of interesting stories are based on relationships. The character might need to save a close relationship to keep his mental wellbeing intact.
Accomplishments
If the character is living a great life with healthy relationships and basic needs fulfilled, it might be possible that the motivation is due to lack of achievement. The character might want to feel a sense of pride. He or she might want to increase his/her self-esteem by performing certain actions. This could help the character in making professional life much better.
How to Determine a Character's Point of View?
Determining a character's point of view in any story, essay, or any other fiction-writing work is very important to understand the meaning of the written content as a whole. Determining a character's point of view helps the reader in understanding and analyzing a text from a deeper level and also helps in a quicker and better understanding of that particular character and its role in the story too. While determining a character's point of view is not as tricky as determining the point of view of an author, new students sometimes do lack the ideas regarding how to do so. Here are some of the most important tips that might help you in determining any character's point of view in a story as you read it:
Read Very Carefully
A deeper-level understanding of anything requires a reader to pay full and uninterrupted attention to everything he or she reads. To assess a character's point of view, you must pay extra attention to those parts of the text where the particular character under analysis is included in one way or the other. Moreover, make sure that you understand everything and are reading with a fresh mind with nothing to cause distractions in the process of your reading. Following this instruction, you will be better able to understand the point of view of a particular character.
Analyze The Character's Word Choice
The kind of vocabulary an author attributes to a specific character can help us a lot in understanding his hidden intentions and unexpressed point of views. It is advisable to pay special attention to the dialogues of the character you are analyzing for its point of views.
Consider the Character's Descriptions
The descriptions about the body language and other aspects of a character are also very important in determining its points of view therefore, the reader must pay special attention to those.
